Don’t believe the hype that the CIA is behind ISIS’s
declaration of an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
“The Caliphate threatens, not only its immediate
adversaries, but the potentates of the Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and the Mother of All
Monarchist Corruption in the Arab Sunni heartland,
the Saudi royal family.” It also signals the
collapse of U.S. strategy in the region.

By Glen Ford

“The
game plan that was hatched in 2011 for
Libya, Syria, Iraq – for the whole
region – is kaput.”

July
05, 2014 "ICH"
- "BAR"
- - ISIS has
proclaimed its caliphate, and the world will never
be the same again. Although the territorial scope of
the jihadist political entity will shift with the
fortunes of battle, or maybe even vanish, the
emergence of the “Islamic State” signals the final
collapse of U.S. imperial strategy in the Muslim
world – certainly, in the Arab regions of Islam.

“The
legality of all emirates, groups, states and
organizations becomes null by the expansion of the
caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops to
their areas,” said Abu Mohamed al-Adnani,
spokesman for the fighters formerly known as
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “Listen to your
caliph and obey him. Support your state, which grows
every day.”

Think of it
as a Salafist declaration of independence – not just
from al Qaida, whose marginality in the region was
confirmed when its designated affiliate in Syria,
Al-Nusra,
swore allegiance to ISIS – but from the Arab
monarchies and western intelligence agencies that
have nurtured the international jihadist network for
almost two generations. The Caliphate threatens, not
only its immediate adversaries in the
Shiite-dominated governments of Syria and Iraq, but
the potentates of the Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait
and the Mother of All Monarchist Corruption in the
Arab Sunni heartland, the Saudi royal family. The
threat is not inferential, but literal, against “all
emirates, groups, states and organizations” that do
not recognize that ISIS in its new incarnation is
the embodiment of Islam at war.

The
jihadist die is cast, a point of no return for the
U.S. strategy of projecting imperial power in the
region through armed Islamic fundamentalist
surrogates. The international jihadist network,
which did not exist before the CIA, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan created it to undermine the leftist secular
government of Afghanistan
in mid-1979, has become a movement that can
no longer be controlled. The physical contours of
the ISIS caliphate, the movement’s dynamic new focal
point, may prove indefensible, especially if the
Americans decide they cannot avoid an all-out
assault on their former asset. But, whatever the
U.S. military response, the game plan that was
hatched in 2011 for Libya, Syria, Iraq – for the
whole region – is kaput, based as it is on the
reliable deployment of jihadists as surrogates for
NATO and Arab royals. Worse, the Arab oil potentates
understand full well that their own regimes are now
in grave danger from the indigenous monstrosity they
have created. The Saudis, in particular, justify
their family’s monopolizing of the Arabian
peninsula’s great wealth as reward for safeguarding
the holy sites of Islam. No doubt the “Islamic
State,” with its movable borders and swiftly
expanding pan-Arab and even pan-Muslim constituency,
would be glad to assume these responsibilities –
over the dead bodies of those Saudi princes who did
not escape to London, Paris and New York. The same
goes for all the royal lineages aligned with the
West and, de facto, Israel.

“U.S.
policymakers have no idea how to reposition
themselves in the region.”

It is true
that the United States retains nearly limitless
power to create chaos in the region. Chaos is useful
in preventing conventional governments and civil
societies from achieving national goals that are
inimical to imperialism. But chaos is not empty; it
is a cauldron in which contradictions can become
explosively acute. The jihadists are, at root,
anti-imperialists – inalterably opposed to
domination by the “Crusaders” of the West and
Zionists. As we have previously asserted, the
fundamentalist jihad, although profoundly
reactionary, inevitably behaves much like a kind of
nationalism – for some, it fills a political void
left by the demise of yesteryear’s secular pan-Arab
nationalism. ISIS now claims to be the expression of
that nationalist-like yearning, as the “Islamic
State.”

If you
think all this is the work of the CIA, then thank
them profusely for accelerating the epic unraveling
of U.S. imperial strategy in the Muslim world. As
during the days when America’s Egyptian stooge
Mubarak was pushed from power, threatening an “Arab
Spring” that might depose the oil monarchies, U.S.
policymakers have no idea how to reposition
themselves in the region. The Americans cannot
replace the jihadists as foot soldiers of
imperialism. Thus, a period of ad-libbing begins,
which will surely involve ostentatious displays of
U.S. military prowess, as the Americans remind
themselves and everyone else that a superpower
outranks a caliphate.

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